Index of Tools

Oxpeckers is a data-driven journalism organization which sources, aggregates and analyses data to help track and expose eco-offences across international borders. #WildEye tracks seizures, arrests, court cases & convictions relating to wildlife and other environmental crimes across Europe, Asia, Southern and Eastern Africa.

TimberStats is a new, interactive, data-driven platform that will aid law enforcement and governments in monitoring the timber trade and detecting illegal shipments.

Compendium that aims to capture the most common red flag indicators for illegal wildlife trade (IWT) happening through containerized sea cargo. It aims to guide and assist the maritime shipping sector in detecting possible non-compliance and IWT-related activities in their supply chains. It also provides recommendations and links to existing tools and best practices to help companies prevent further exploitation from traffickers.

#MineAlert is a website and app that alerts residents and organisations to mining applications in their regions. It aims to promote public and private sector accountablity in the mining sector, to advance civil society and socio-economic rights, to protect the free flow of information, and to strengthen justice and equality.

#MineAlert-Africa is a geo-journalism platform documenting biodiversity threats posed by mining licenses across the African continent. It confronts official boundaries of mining licenses across over 21 African countries against protected areas, allowing journalists for a quick verification of any license holders operations. The data featured covers a snapshot taken in November 2023.

The PoachTracker tool unveils statistics on rhino poaching incidents in Southern Africa, specifically of rhino deaths and poaching arrests in the country as far back as 2010. The tool is based on original data collected by courts, law enforcement agencies, and web scraping by Oxpeckers, which is aggregated and filtered in an interactive and accessible way.

The Oxpeckers Rhino Poachers Court Cases map shows the location of court cases involving rhino poaching in the country using data obtained from South Africa’s Ministry of Police. You can select individual markers on the map to read details about individual court cases and you can filter the results on the map by station, date and the name of the accused.

An 89-page guidebook to help enforcement officers identify species openly sold in markets in three Mekong countries. Also available in Burmese, Laotian, Thai, and Chinese.

An identification guide to support enforcement identify species of Indian owls in illegal trade.

Interactive graphics and visualisation tools on wildlife trafficking through airports and flight routes between 2009 and 2021 derived from open-source wildlife seizure data collected by C4ADS. When the ROUTES Partnership came to a close in 2021, the data and functionality from the ROUTES Dashboard were transferred into TRAFFIC’s Wildlife Trade Portal.

TradeMapper is an interactive tool to visualise trade data, through source, transit, and destination countries.

The most comprehensive open-access repository of wildlife seizure data. The Wildlife Trade Portal is an interactive tool that displays TRAFFIC’s open-source wildlife seizure and incident data.

The SHERLOC portal is an initiative to facilitate the dissemination of information regarding the implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, the three Protocols thereto and the international legal framework against terrorism. Its legislative database provides data on multiple crime types, including crimes affecting the environment, and corruption.

Wildlife Conservation Society offers a suite of digital tools designed to support wildlife conservation efforts. It features technologies for data collection, monitoring, and analysis, including tools for tracking wildlife, detecting threats, and managing conservation projects. These resources aim to enhance field operations, improve data accuracy, and support effective decision-making in wildlife and habitat management.

LionLocalizer is an online tool to provide intelligence into the possible geographic origin of any seized lion body parts. It uses genetic sequences generated from seized lion parts to match them against a database with known, georeferenced lion genetic sequences.

Just as LionLocalizer can provide intelligence into the possible geographic origin of any seized lion body parts, Loxodonta Localizer is able to use genetic sequences generated from elephant body parts, including ivory, to match them against a database known, georeferenced elephant genetic sequences.

The Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Financial Flows Toolkit is for financial institutions with particular focus on Africa, Asia and broader global financial centres. The toolkit also provides comprehensive resources for addressing wildlife trafficking, including practical guides and strategic frameworks. It offers tools for law enforcement and conservationists to improve their response to illegal wildlife trade, focusing on investigation techniques, legal frameworks, and inter-agency cooperation. The red flag guidance document within this toolkit compiles a set of key IWT-related red flag indicators to help financial institutions identify the key signs of suspicious activity related to IWT. Some of these red flags are common to other types of crime, but are particularly relevant to IWT.

Provides standards for capturing and using photographic evidence to support wildlife trade investigations. The guide details best practices for photographing seized wildlife and related materials to ensure the evidence is useful for legal and enforcement purposes. Guidelines aim to enhance the quality and consistency of photographic documentation in wildlife crime cases, supporting effective enforcement and prosecution.

Online platform that offers detailed, interactive maps and resources for understanding and comparing legal frameworks across different jurisdictions. It provides insights into various areas of law, including environmental regulations and compliance requirements, by showcasing how legal standards and practices vary globally. The platform aims to support legal professionals, researchers, and policymakers in navigating complex legal landscapes and fostering cross-border legal understanding.

Platform that provides tools for collecting and analyzing field data in wildlife conservation and environmental monitoring. It offers a customizable data collection system that uses mobile devices to record observations, track wildlife movements, and gather various environmental metrics. The platform is designed to enhance data accuracy and efficiency in fieldwork, supporting better decision-making and management in conservation projects.

Provides an interactive platform for visualizing and analyzing data related to wildlife trafficking and conservation. It offers detailed maps, charts, and data insights to track illegal wildlife trade trends and hotspots. The dashboard is designed to support researchers, policymakers, and conservationists by providing actionable information to combat wildlife crime and enhance conservation strategies.

Comprehensive software that offers tools for real-time data collection, monitoring, and analysis to support wildlife and protected area management. It provides a centralized platform for tracking wildlife movements, monitoring threats, and coordinating field operations, enhancing decision-making and operational efficiency. The software is designed to help conservation organizations and park managers improve their response to environmental challenges and better protect natural habitats.

PortMATE is a tool designed to improve the monitoring of port activities and assist in the identification and mitigation of illicit trafficking.

“End Wildlife Trafficking Online” is dedicated to combating wildlife trafficking, a significant global issue that threatens biodiversity and ecosystems. It raises awareness about the illegal trade of animals and plants, emphasizing the impact on species, conservation efforts, and local communities. Complete the online form to report suspected illegal wildlife products including live endangered species or products made from their parts for sale online. The Coalition will review these listings and work with company partners to remove those that violate the Coalition’s Prohibited Wildlife Policy Framework and are relevant to their platforms.

A machine learning system that can isolate potential illegal wildife trade products for sale on online marketplaces. Current training data is on ivory, pangolin, wild cat teeth and claws, elephant hair and skin. The system is housed at WWF Singapore and is part of the Cyber Spotters initiative. Data extrapolated from this system gets forwarded to law enforcement (if deemed serious), to e-commerce companies (for their records) and kept internally to be used as references for potential future action i.e. demand reduction initiatives, digital deterrent.

Pilot machine learning solutions in the process of being developed to assess and predict locations where known drivers of zoonotic disease emergence, spillover and outbreaks are likely to occur. This solution will utilise open source environmental, epidemiology and demographic data including deforestation data, disease outbreaks reports, wildife market location evaluations and regional infrastructure developments. The ML algorithms will be tailored to extract features within defined geographical coordinates, utilizing spatial analytics to assess proximity to relevant geographical entities. The algorithm will then seek to identify the importance of geographic, demographic, environmental or other factors in predicting disease hotspots.

Wildlife trafficking offender data is collated by the Southeast Asia Chapter and updated monthly for the United for Wildlife Taskforce. This data features details on nearly 400 arrests of individuals alleged to be trafficking wildlife globally over the past twelve months.

A reference system linking information on trees and their global trade, especially species at risk of over harvesting. The system integrates data on taxonomy, conservation, geography, and trade regulations, all acquired from online databases or primary literature. Intended users include professionals or enthusiasts working with forest resources and their sustainable use.

A complete, self-contained, multi-illumination, field-deployable, open-source platform for field imaging and identification of forest products at the macroscopic scale. The XyloTron platform integrates an imaging system build with off-the-shelf components, flexible illumination options with visible and UV light sources, software for camera control, and deep learning models for identification.

The interactive Global Environmental Crime Tracker has up-to-date data collected from publicly available information, including government reports, enforcement agency press releases and non-governmental and academic papers on environmental crime. It incorporates news media coverage in several languages and other details provided by partner NGOs.

The Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing Dashboard is a publicly available tool utilizing data from Windward to identify vessels at high risk of IUU fishing and incidents of fishing activities, dark activities, and likely transshipments in three areas of interest in Latin America. The dashboard is intended to serve as a publicly available tool for researchers, analysts, journalists and the overall public to gain an awareness and understanding of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (IUUF) in important areas around Latin America. It provides situational awareness of ongoing activities, as well as historical data going back to 2022, in order to meet various research needs.

This is a compilation of input from advocates and researchers who were asked what can be done to better protect the oceans and its workers. This document consists of three levels. The first lists actions that individuals can take. The second itemizes actions governments or companies can take. The third offers broader context.

The Critical Minerals Dashboard locates mining projects of critical minerals and Rare Earth Elements (REEs) in Latin America, considering the strategic competition between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Data is sourced from multiple open-source channels and will be regularly updated and expanded.

AI Guardian 2.0 uses a customized model created by PaddleX, a development tool for the PaddlePaddle platform. The tool uses internet technology to enable the comprehensive management of illegal wildlife trade on the Internet and to make wildlife protection more efficient. The tool adopts the latest large vision model (LVM) and was trained jointly by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) and Baidu PaddlePaddle through semi-supervised learning. The model will be upgraded regularly to incorporate the latest technology development and will expand the number and variety of species covered to keep up with latest trends in wildlife cybercrime.

Wildlife Sentinel is an app to help staff at airports, airlines, and other aviation companies report suspected wildlife trafficking and corruption. The app is anonymous and is available for download on the Apple Store and Google Play Store.

This map from Ecocrime Data, the Igarapé Institute’s new data visualization platform, provides an overview of the ways in which environmental crime threatens forests, traditional peoples and communities, and the region’s biodiversity.

The platform offers an immersive experience showing how land grabbing, illegal logging, illegal mining and the illicit wildlife trade are harming our climate. It also reveals the many social challenges that emerge from environmental crimes, including corruption, slavery and violence.

Wildlife Witness lets you report illegal trade. It makes it simple for you to watch out for wildlife and be part of the solution. It is the first global community action tool to tackle illegal trade and gives you the power to make a positive difference. With the app you can report wildlife you see caught in trade, see reports you’ve made on a global map, learn about wildlife affected by trade, and learn what to look out for.

Assists with general species identification. Every observation can contribute to biodiversity science, from the rarest butterfly to the most common backyard weed. The app shares community findings with scientific data repositories like the Global Biodiversity Information Facility to help scientists find and use community data.

A community of conservation practitioners, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, academics, researchers, social marketers and advertisers who believe that behavioural science approaches can help to reduce demand for illegally traded wildlife products.

The tool helps to assess wildlife markets and trade situations in the Asia-Pacific region to risks of future zoonotic outbreaks. The framework is intended to provide guidance to the region’s governments to assess the relative risk of potential new incidents of serious emerging infectious diseases associated with the trade in wildlife. The risk matrix, published in the One Health scientific journal, will initially be used to analyze wildlife markets in the Asia Pacific region. The evaluation tool recognizes the connection between people, nature and their shared environment, and provides a way for policy makers to take a holistic approach to ecosystem, animal and human health.

Visualises CITES trade data over time, by species or by country.

CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) is an international agreement between governments that aims to ensure that international trade in specimens of wild animals and plants does not threaten their survival. The Checklist of CITES Species allows the exploration of more than 36,000 species of animals and plants and their degree of protection.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) Trade Database, managed by the United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEPWCMC) on behalf of the CITES Secretariat, is unique and currently holds over 13 million records of trade in wildlife and over 34,000 scientific names of taxa listed in the CITES Appendices. Around a million records of trade in CITES-listed species of wildlife are currently reported annually and these data are entered into the CITES Trade Database (an Oracle relational database) as soon as they are received by UNEP-WCMC. CITES annual reports are the only available means of monitoring the implementation of the Convention and the level of international trade in specimens of species included in the CITES Appendices. The CITES Trade Database can be queried and data downloaded from the CITES website (www.cites.org) or the UNEP-WCMC website (http://unep-wcmc.org/citestrade). You can contact UNEP-WCMC directly (see Annex 6 for contact details) if you have a specific data request that you are unable to answer using the online data querying facilities.

Species+, developed by United Nations Environment Program World Conservation Monitoring Centres (UNEP-WCMC) and the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) Secretariat, is a website designed to assist Parties with implementing CITES, Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species (CMS) and other multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs). Species+ provides a centralised portal for accessing key information on species of global concern. In particular, Species+ contains information on all species that are listed in the Appendices of CITES and CMS, as well as other CMS Family listings and species included in the Annexes to the EU Wildlife Trade Regulations.

The information contained within this book was originally developed for the wildlife law enforcement community in connection with its mandate to enforce international endangered species trade regulations and restrictions. Thousands of copies of previous editions of this guidebook have been distributed in three languages throughout the world. The goal is to provide wildlife law enforcement officers, scientists and managers with a visual and non-destructive means of tentatively identifying the authenticity and species origin of suspected ivory for enforcement purposes, including a “probable cause” justification for seizure of suspected illegal material, at ports of entry. Emphasis also remains on carved ivory, mostly because whole teeth are easily identified.

This pocket guide was produced for quick identification of wildlife parts and products commonly sold in markets in Southeast Asia.

Identification guide for traditional Asian medicines in trade made to assist enforcers with determining which medicines and ingredients are legal or illegal, in the context of the cases they adeal with. The majority of law enforcers have no knowledge of Chinese characters and the many forms that these medicines take. This guide is primarily for law enforcers based outside Asia, in countries where large volumes of traditional Asian medicines are imported. The regions where this version of the guide may be of most use include Europe, North America and Australasia.

SMART enables the collection, storage, communication, and evaluation of data on patrol efforts, patrol results, and threat levels. It is a conservation area management platform, including mobile, desktop, and cloud-based components with a wide range of applications in conservation practice. This platform allows conservationists to easily collect, visualize, store, analyze, report and act on a wide range of data relevant for protecting wildlife and improving your overall conservation impact. SMART 7 is the latest version that has been released. Multiple tools are bundled in the app that can be used for different purposes.

Dust-like material that can be sprayed onto wood and detected only with a hand-held device. Stardust has the potential to be applied to timber and pulp and paper products as a cheaper alternative to bar-codes, radio-frequency identification (RFID) and other tracking technologies. Stardust is applied via microscope optical markers, thus promised to be precise, hand-held and practical in-field detection devices. There are multiple markers available that should provide instant authentication.

Intelligently processes images from camera traps in the field and immediately flags to rangers the presence of an elephant or human, allowing those protecting wildlife to identify poaching threats in real time and respond more immediately. The tool is not actively maintained or available for use at this time.

Detects land-cover changes resulting from human activities in near real-time, producing updates every 16 days. The computational neural network is ‘trained’ to understand the normal pattern of changes in vegetation greenness in relation to terrain and rainfall for a site and then marks areas as changed where the greenness suddenly changes well beyond these normal limits.

The trade in wildlife information exchange (TWIX) online platform features a series of tools developed to facilitate information exchange and international cooperation between law enforcement agencies across Europe and Africa.

Smartphone-based supply chain traceability system developed by TreeTAG Technologies, Inc that tracks the location of logs transported from the forest to the mill. It was piloted in Guatemala and is since no longer active or available for use.

Triton analyzes the ownership structures of the world’s industrialized fishing fleets, revealing the linkages between fishing vessels at sea and the companies who profit from their activities. While free to use, Triton is still invite-only – it may be accessed by submitting a form linked on the tool’s webpage.

Ocean Aero has created the world’s first and only environmentally powered Autonomous Underwater and Surface Vehicle (AUSV), the TRITON, that collects data both above and below the ocean’s surface and relays it to you from anywhere, at anytime. TRITON is fully wind and solar powered, eliminating the use of environment-polluting fuel and is fully autonomous, eliminating the need for on-board or nearby crews. This autonomy allows for extended deployment and broad scope mission execution in remote ocean domains for longer periods of time.

Autonomous uncrewed surface vehicle that can collect data for a year without fuel.

Global conservation technology community of 7,000 people in 120 countries discussing 1,300 topics like biologging, camera traps, and machine learning.

Wildlife Alert wasdesigned for military personnel, who often purchasewildlife products as souvenirs, to determine if a productis made from a protected species. Both the United States Department of Defense and Wildlife Conservation Society agreed to make the app available to the public in an effort to better combat illegal trade, particularly in Afghanistan. The app’s database allows for over 75 species to be identified, including all species of cat from around the world. Despite its ease of use, it doesn’t allow users to report the vendor. It does, however, inform and raise awareness of the types of items that could potentially be confiscated.

China-based technology to confirm species identity through a series of questions. It takes an extra step to outsource initially unidentifiable items to external scientists. If the product is identified as illegal by the user or external scientists, steps are taken to track down the product and trader/trafficker. The app was specifically developed to support forest police, customs officers, and others in the field to address trafficking across China.

Using artificial intelligence and the power of big data to provide scientists an unequaled view into the habits and habitats of wildlife, data that is critical for crafting smart conservation policies. It takes “animal selfies” through motion-detector cameras — known as camera traps — to snap thousands of photos a day of animals rarely seen by human eyes. As the largest camera-trap database in the world, Wildlife Insights has the potential to transform wildlife conservation by providing reliable, frequent and up-to-date information on myriad species that are largely invisible to science and conservation practitioners.

App to combat illegal wildlife trade across Asia and West Africa. It was designed to help frontline enforcement agencies, private sector employees, and the general public correctly identify, report, and handle animals and plants frequently caught in the illegal wildlife trade. WildScan hosts a comprehensive library containing information on over 600 endangered species and illegal wildlife products. The app’s identification wizard component poses four simple questions to assist users in identifying the appropriate species. It is expanding to be used globally.

Maritime risk analytics platform used to identify illicit activity through inconsistent or “risky” behavior.

Explore the laws and regulation that govern fishing around the world.

The National Whistle Blower Center’s Global Wildlife Whistleblower Program is a secure worldwide web-based platform designed to educate and incentivize potential whistleblowers in order to dramatically increase the number of high-quality confidential reports essential to detect wildlife crime and enforce the laws prohibiting illegal trafficking worldwide.

Researchers from Roger Williams University and the New England Aquarium developed this interactive web tool to illuminate and evaluate the global shipping pathways of the aquarium trade. Registered users can examine exporting countries and the ports where the fish and invertebrates enter the U.S. Additional features include selecting a species/group of species to determine origin and volume in the trade. The web portal is the culmination of several years of work, including tabulating the volume and diversity of marine ornamental species entering the U.S. via aquarium trade pathways.

Software for “smoothed and continuous assignment tests” that combines genetic and statistical methods to determine the origin of poached ivory. The methods estimate geographic-specific allele frequencies over the entire African elephants’ range. These geographic-specific allele frequency estimates are used to infer the geographic origin of DNA samples.

An extension of the SCAT tools. It aims to determine the geographic origin(s) of large elephant ivory seizures using a Voronoi tessellation method that utilizes genetic similarities across tusks to simultaneously infer the origin of multiple samples that could have one or more origin(s).

Published annually, the public edition of the Basel AML Index ranks countries with sufficient data to calculate a reliable risk score. It is a snapshot of global ML/TF risks and progress by countries and regions over time.

Since its inception in 1995, the Corruption Perceptions Index, Transparency International’s flagship research product, has become the leading global indicator of public sector corruption. The index offers an annual snapshot of the relative degree of corruption by ranking countries and territories from all over the globe. In 2012, Transparency International revised the methodology used to construct the index to allow for comparison of scores from one year to the next.

Web-based tool that looks at data tracking the movement of fish from port to port and country to country. The tool highlights any trade information that looks suspicious and possibly illegal. Through rapid, automated collection, it compares, and analyzes United Nations trade data from more than 170 countries. A user can search trade data by time, product, and partner countries. The tool is either no longer maintained or not available for use.

The Geobosques platform is a key tool for forest management in the country of Peru. It provides annual information on deforestation, as well as early warnings of deforestation, every 16 days, allowing monitoring of specific areas of interest to users. Currently, in addition to information on Amazonian forests, it has the first baseline map of the seasonally dry forests of the northern coast of Peru.

The Global Fishing Watch map is the first open-access online tool for visualization and analysis of vessel-based human activity at sea. Anyone with an internet connection can access the map to monitor global fishing activity from 2012 to the present for more than 65,000 commercial fishing vessels that are responsible for a significant part of global seafood catch.

An open-source web application to monitor global forests in near real-time. GFW is an initiative of the World Resources Institute, with partners including Google, USAID, the University of Maryland, Esri, Vizzuality and many other academic, non-profit, public, and private organizations.

First global analytical tool to provide an assessment of criminal markets, categories of criminal actors, and resilience capacity for 193 UN member states.

Utilises stable isotope methods validated by researchers from WWF Germany and works with partners from the University of Regensburg who analyse radioactive isotopes to determine the age of ivory. Its website includes a free and readily accessible reference database of over 700 samples of ivory from African and Asian elephant range states, and was handed over to the international CITES community at COP 17 in 2016.

Map created by Amazon Georeferenced Socioenvironmental Information Network (RAISG) to map illegal mining in protected territories of the Amazon.

“Gold Library” – database with samples obtained from different parts of Brazil that allows the federal police to create a chemical fingerprint of each sample, which they can then use to cross-reference the origin of seized or suspicious gold.

A machine learning-based dashboard that captures shipping invoices (electronic or paper) and conducts analytics on cargo shipment data (ex. price, weight, country of origin, taxonomic identity) for inspectors to easily identify questionable shipments. It is being tested with Canadian government agencies. It was designed to automatically analyse shipment paperwork and identify questionable shipments. Once anomalies have been identified and shipments are being inspected, officers will be supported in their decision making with an integrated species identification application.

Supply chain tracking using blockchain.

200 earth imaging satellites, the largest in history, imaging the whole Earth land mass daily.

AI-driven detection algorithm for computed tomography scanning systems using bespoke Microsoft AI to curb the trade. Currently, there are no integrated, multi-species illegal wildlife algorithms on the market. The project can be analysed to build a comprehensive and detailed picture of illegal wildlife trafficking across the world. It has been developed in collaboration with the United Kingdom Border Force’s Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) team, London Heathrow Airport, as well as the Duke of Cambridge’s Royal Foundation.

Automated system for detecting illegal wildlife products in security screening systems, without compromising airport security.

Platform that enables buyers to collect information from suppliers to establish a chain-of-custody. Radix Tree also performs legality risk assessments based on information provided, a required step for compliance with the European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR).

Monitors the advance of gold mining via satellite and radar in the Amazonian region of Madre de Dios in Peru, a country where the “gold rush” has devastated more than 237,000 acres (96,000 hectares) of primary forest over the past 30 years. It can overcome the limitation that satellites encounter when trying to capture photos of the forest on a cloudy day. RAMI’s radar monitoring can “see” through clouds and thus provide information about the forest without weather patterns getting in the way.

Database that gathers DNA profiles and the location of rhinos in South Africa. When authorities confiscate rhino horn, they can run a DNA test to determine its exact origin. This is intended to serve as a deterrent to poachers and assist in prosecutions.

Database for efforts working to address seafood traceability, IUU fishing, and social responsibility topics. Map has since been archived but can still be accessed online.

Web platform that requires actors along the supply chain to enter volume and authorization information. The system allows government officials and law enforcement officers to follow the flow of timber products from the forest to buyers, and identify discrepancies in volumes, species and products reported.

The Illegal Wildlife Trade (IWT) Financial Flows Toolkit is for financial institutions with particular focus on Africa, Asia and broader global financial centres. The toolkit also provides comprehensive resources for addressing wildlife trafficking, including practical guides and strategic frameworks. It offers tools for law enforcement and conservationists to improve their response to illegal wildlife trade, focusing on investigation techniques, legal frameworks, and inter-agency cooperation. The red flag guidance document within this toolkit compiles a set of key IWT-related red flag indicators to help financial institutions identify the key signs of suspicious activity related to IWT. Some of these red flags are common to other types of crime, but are particularly relevant to IWT.